Coaching Shorts: The Other Shoe Drops In Arizona

By Brett | Permalink | No Comments | October 17th, 2006 | Trackback

Let’s re-cap the last 24 hours in the desert: The Cardinals jump out to a quick 14-0 lead over the lifeless Bears. Rex Grossman does his best Kurt Warner impersonation, turns the ball over 4 times in the first half, and the Bears find themselves down 20-o at halftime. As the 3rd quarter starts to come to a close, the Bears defense begins to engineer the craziest comeback we’ve ever seen, overcoming a 20 point deficit without scoring an offensive touchdown. Denny Green then has a postgame meltdown of epic proportions. Earlier today, Green found his fall guy for the debacle, and fired his offensive coordinator, Keith Rowen.

Green’s claim that the team wasn’t scoring enough points is somewhat legit (the Cards are in the middle of the pack, averaging 18.5 points/game), but, c’mon Denny…that’s not at all what this firing is about. It’s about finding an excuse for the inexcusable, and deflecting blame from yourself. Sure, the Cards got a little conservative in the 4th quarter against the Bears, and yeah the ground game was atrocious. But the Cards came into that game with a brilliant game plan designed to exploit Chicago’s defensive weakness –lack of speed in the secondary– and executed it perfectly early on. As the game wore on, Rowen called plays exactly the same way any other good offensive coordinator would have while playing with a big lead against a good team and a rookie QB under center: He kept the clock moving, mixed it up with some high percentage passes, and put his team in position to put the game away.

So maybe this wasn’t about one game. Maybe this was about the fact that the Cards are now 1-5, but have enough talent to be at least .500. Maybe it’s a culmination of what’s happened in the first six weeks of the season. In all fairness, though, it’s Kurt Warner that turned the ball over 15 times in four games. It’s a disgusting offensive line and Edge James that can’t get the ground game going. Until last night, it’s been the Cards talented but underachieving defense that hasn’t stopped anyone this year. None of that is on Keith Rowen.

Denny Green did what all bad leaders do when the find themselves under fire….he blamed someone else. And, that, as Green said himself in his post-game conference, is bullshit.

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